Bed of Thorns
by Bligy
Summary: AU; It was supposed to have been over years ago.  The Guardians had dispersed, the Items were no longer worrisome... but the release of a forbidden container brings all the former bearers together to fight the one thing harder than darkness: Themselves.


**A Bed of Thorns**

**By**

**Bligy  
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><p><strong>Disclaimer:<strong>Neither the idea that inspired the story was mine, nor is Yu-Gi-Oh or any similarities to other fandoms.

**Summary:** AU; It was supposed to have been over years ago. The Guardians had dispersed, the Items were no longer worrisome... but the release of a forbidden container brings all the former bearers together to fight the one thing harder than darkness: Themselves. **Millennium-Items**Centric.

**Characters:**Atem, Set (please read Author's Note), Yuugi, Seto, Pegasus, Marik, Ryo, Sugoroku (Grandpa Mutuo), and eventually all of the bearers of the Millennium Items. I'm hoping that all characters will eventually join in the storyline, although for the first thirty thousand words, these are the main ones. XP

**Pairings:**Gen for now, should there be any pairings, they WILL be yaoi.

**Warnings:**Lots of swearing. Probably a considerable amount of year-confusion, as this is written in the nineties, and while I did grow up in that era, I was all of seven and thus am not an expert on what was available at that time.

**Author's Note: PLEASE**** READ.**  
>This fic is labelled as an AU for a reason. Please be warned that this story VERY, VERY loosely follows any kind of legend from Yu-Gi-Oh, and that I have attempted to do my research for yearsdates etc., but I may have still missed some things. It's been a long time since YGO.

This fic takes placed initially BEFORE the events of the series and gradually builds up to them, including the Gozaburo incident among other things (like the solving of the puzzle), while inserting two characters from the series into a modern role (Atem and Set), but with an alternate storyline. They 'will' be the primary characters for the first while, although it's my intention for the primary focus of the story to shift from character to character over the course of the story.

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><p><strong>July 26<strong>**th****, 1996…**

The winds around the city were bristling, the sand got everywhere and made their guns difficult to shoot and even more difficult to aim. The fucking things could be dropped into a swamp and still fire, but they were coughing and sputtering the second that a single flake of sand integrated into their all-but-impossible to destroy innards.

"Well, that's great," Atem muttered to himself, tossing the gun away and picking up an alternate AK-47, hoping that this one would live up to its normal standards. "How are you doing?"

His fellow archaeologist and stoic, sarcastic bastard of a best friend rolled his eyes, the bullet between his teeth receiving a slight amount of what little saliva Set had left in his body before going into his last pistol.

"Final rounds," Set declared, cocking his gun and lifting it up.

Atem would have said Set was posing… if he didn't know any better. Set didn't have it in him to pose. He just made those motions in every-day life. If they weren't in the middle of a warzone, Atem probably would have been laughing at the man.

"Where are we, damnit?" Atem asked, gazing at the walls around them in wonder and attempting to get his breathing even.

All around the ground were bodies littered in bullets, blood seeping into the dry ground beneath them and supplies all but worthless with the sand.

"Our tomb," Set declared, and rolled his eyes at Atem's glance, "Probably."

"Well, I'm not going to die here-"

"-And I'm not dying alone-"

"-so I guess we're just not dying today," Atem declared.

Set paused in his forward advance, his feet kicking over bodies casually – looking for ammo and other supplies – and gave that little twitch of his lips which could possibly be mistaken for a smile if that stick wasn't jammed so far up his ass.

Atem nudged him with his shoulder as he passed, taking the lead and letting Set cover their tracks. Set was far more anal about making sure they were hidden, and Atem had the devil's own luck when it came for searching for ways out.

At first, when 'The Ultimate Discovery!' had come about – a possible lead into a hidden 'City of the Dead' – Set and he had been on it like white on rice; merely a pair of bored explorers, looking for something to do. Set was adamant about the social standing, wanting to be something better than their current worthless nothing, Atem had been about the history.

They were a strange pair, having met at a junior-archaeologist camp and having hated each other enough to get along, finding each other at the same schools, same university, and finally, the same dig site. After feuding for damned near a year on the site, they finally just joined forces and became a team to be reckoned with.

Between the two of them, and a few other helpers, or 'minions' as Set had addressed them, they'd managed to make most of the discoveries on the dig. That being said, making the discoveries and receiving credit for them were two very different things. Apparently whoever 'lead' the dig, 'made' the discoveries.

Set, crying bullshit, had immediately left the dig, and Atem had followed him. His loyalty ran in his blood thicker than the very cells that made him.

After they'd done so, however, their reputation had been all but demolished. No sites would take them, and neither of them had enough money to set out on random sites of their own.

Thus, they'd taken up the offer of 'any willing hand', and had decided to steal away with some of the objects, should the need arise.

"This is fucking ridiculous. What the hell killed these people?" Set muttered, and Atem frowned, looking around.

In the upper halls, bullets had been 'everywhere'. They'd been in the walls, in the ground, some of them visible in the corpses themselves, but as he looked around, the area seemed almost… clean. The ground had a few scattered shells, but the carpet of men beneath them weren't dripping in blood like the last three halls.

"How deep would you say we are?" Atem asked, looking at the walls for some sign, like he was actually accustomed to this site enough to date the location by sight alone.

"Neck deep and rising," Set answered, and Atem rolled his eyes.

Ask a stupid question… yeah, yeah.

Atem adjusted the floodlight on his chest and picked out his handheld as well. Although there were a few lit torches (why the fuck would anyone light torches when they had perfectly good flashlights?), the halls were hardly bright enough for the walls to be clearly seen.

Set turned to see what he was doing, and Atem appreciated it considerably when his friend actually added his own flashlight, exposing the walls and bodies in clearer light.

What he saw, when he roughly shoved the material off a few faces, made his body tighten with fear and horror.

"They're…" Atem gagged.

"Mummified?" Set finished, and Atem could understand his panic – his own mind echoing it – that caused him to lift his gun again, taking up that stupid pose that Atem had all but gotten used to over the years.

"What the hell could 'do' this?" Atem murmured, more to make noise and quell his rising terror, than to receive an answer. He knew that Set was just has lost as he was – if not more so. Set was amazing with his hands – give him tools and a site, and he was fucking 'magic' – but Atem was the one with the books and the knowledge. If 'he' didn't know what it was…

"Take the next right," Set commanded, his voice shook only slightly with the fear that they were both repressing, and Atem nodded, his teeth chattering with nerves.

Atem could see why Set commanded it almost instantly – there was blood on the walls. Obviously this meant that they were going backwards… either that, or whatever had mummified the people in the halls had spread their blood over these ones.

The corpses on the ground had obviously been dead for awhile, their trampled forms grotesque in the quasi-light of their LEDs.

Atem wished that he had the words to crack a joke, to break the tension and make this a little more bearable. In the end, his tongue all but shriveled in his mouth and his panic rose in its stead.

Set was a comfortable presence at his back, but he was still left with the undeniable 'what the fuck?'.

They'd come here, been shown around, handed some tools and been told to 'make themselves useful'. It had only been a few hours before they'd found the hall with the first body, a few gunshots rippling in the distance – like thunder. Atem had been off to see if he could save anyone, despite Set's screaming obscenities and warnings… perhaps he should learn to trust his friend in the future.

"Why did you stop?" Set asked him, and Atem blinked. He hadn't even realized that he had.

When his eyes caught up with his brain, he noted that he was in a large space – not a hallway – and that there was an obviously ancient Egyptian container on the ground. It was half-open, some of its contents were on the ground; most of it was broken, but there were still two intact pieces inside.

"Where the fuck are we?" Set asked, looking around, and shining his flashlight everywhere in an attempt to figure out their location.

"Stop flailing," Atem commanded, receiving an annoyed sigh, before they started working together to try to pinpoint a way out.

"Aren't these feet? Wasn't someone uptop talking about an Anubis figure in the sands?" Set asked, his floodlight and flashlight both solidly aimed at the barely-corroded form of feet in the ground, the container obviously coming from a large hole beneath it.

"A container… from a tomb buried beneath the feet of Anubis?" Atem gasped, his words nearly swallowed in his horror.

"Didn't I watch a movie about this?" Set asked.

"You watch movies?" Atem asked, just to hear noise, just to 'make' noise and forget for a second exactly how much shit they were in.

"I think you dragged me," Set shrugged, and turned to look at him with that twitch-smile on his face. One glance in Atem's direction wiped all amusement out of his tone. His eyes stopped twinkling and his gun rose once more. "Let's go."

"I don't… think we're going to be able to," Atem stated, turning to walk back to the container. He looked for the lid and quickly started translating the hieratic, desperately searching through his brain's archives to find what the words meant.

"All that schooling and you're stammering over basic symbols, what are you good for if not your quick translating skills? Fuck…" Set muttered, looking around the room and settling on the canisters not yet taken out of the container.

"I don't think this is entirely hieratic… I mean, most of it is, but there's… modifications, or something. I don't know, maybe it's damaged?" Atem stated, unwilling to touch the box in fear of the carnage around them.

"What do you think it is, some sort of… magic?" Set grumbled, kneeling beside him and reaching out for the box.

Atem slapped Set's hands away, glaring at him mutinously.

"If you think that we've come this far, just to die by some stupid fucking curse that could be as easily avoided as 'not touching that', you're out of your mind," Atem pointed out, meeting Set's glare with his blank faced indifference.

"Translate that damned box," Set commanded as he rose to his feet.

Atem felt like kicking him or bitching him out – the stress of the situation making Set's ego feel overwhelming – but he swallowed the words and attempted to recognize the necessity in the statement.

"It… it says something about opening the box, and removing the contents," Atem provided.

"Probably stating 'don't', I'm guessing," Set nodded, going to check the entrance that they came from, and then the one going in the other direction – chances were for airflow, to see which was more likely to lead to the surface.

"More or less, yeah," Atem agreed.

"So we can touch it, so long as we don't take anything out," Set confirmed, obviously having reached his conclusion about airflow as he returned to his side and knelt down again.

"Well… it's either that or we're damned anyway by association," Atem shrugged helplessly.

"Great," Set grunted, lifting the cover to the contained and closing it as solidly as he could. The box was only medium-sized, but made out of solid stone. It was going to be a bitch to carry. "Let's get out of here."

"Amen," Atem agreed, following his friend as they continued to search for an exit.


End file.
